July 2021: I Tried GitHub Copilot & Wrote about Pulling Config Server Values in a JavaScript App
I also switched jobs - surprise!
Hey everyone,
It’s wild to me how quickly this summer has been moving - it seems like I was just writing up the June newsletter! It’s also crazy how busy this past month has been - I thought these hot summer months were when things were supposed to slow down a bit.
But regardless, I’m excited to share some of what’s been going on with you - I’ve got a personal job update, plus what you subscribed for - cool tech stuff.
Let’s get started.
I joined the IoT Startup Blues Wireless as a Staff Software Engineer
This past month I started a new job as a staff software engineer for the Internet of Things startup Blues Wireless, founded by Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes and former Chief Software Architect of Microsoft.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Blues Wireless is doing really cool work to make cellular connectivity in IoT products easy.
To give you one example: imagine you have a company with trucks making deliveries all over the city that you need to keep track of. With a Blues Wireless Notecard in each truck, you can get data like GPS coordinates, temperature readings, and more straight out of the box. Even when there’s no WiFi connection available (like in moving trucks) because each Notecard has pre-provisioned cellular coverage through AT&T for up to 10 years’ worth of data, it’s not a problem. And the data is sent to a secure cloud that can be easily accessed by services that want to consume it.
And that’s just the barest tip of the iceberg - if you’re curious to learn more, I recommend you check out our developer site. It’s got some great “getting started” tutorials.
IoT is something I’ve never really explored before, and I’m excited to have a reason to start learning more about it. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about cool projects I’m building with Raspberry Pis in the near future.
The React Wednesdays Live Stream invited me back to try GitHub Copilot
Early in July, GitHub released its new AI-powered code tool, named GitHub Copilot, and after getting beta access, the show’s two co-hosts, TJ VanToll and Dan Wilson, and I tested it out live on July 14th.
Live coding is always an adventure and this show is no exception, but it was a lot of fun and the initial results for GC are pretty cool. Give it a watch if you’d like to see Copilot in action.
This month, I added a follow-up blog after my post last month, showing how to use a Spring Cloud Config server in a Node.js application.
Config servers make things like feature toggles infinitely easier for developers to handle. In my last blog post, I showed how to set up a Java-based Spring Cloud config server - Spring makes it really easy!
And in this post, I show how to use that same config server in a Node-based project. With an npm package and a little config code in the Node.js server, you’ll be pulling config values from it in no time. It’s come in really handy for me, I hope it will for you too.
Have a great start to your August. And please share this newsletter with your friends if you enjoyed it.
See you next month,
Paige
Not subscribed yet? No worries.
I send a free email every month or so. You can check out my archive, or sign up below: